[144] in athena10
Re: The default prompt
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Quentin Smith)
Sat Mar 29 13:57:07 2008
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:54:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Quentin Smith <quentin@MIT.EDU>
To: Timothy G Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>
cc: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@mit.edu>, linerva@mit.edu, debathena@mit.edu,
athena10@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0803291304071.30138@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0803291352400.16263@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, Timothy G Abbott wrote:
> Checking more carefully on Google, it seems that "$?interactive" is a common
> paradigm for deciding whether scripts are interactive (even though the
> information comes from $?prompt; I don't really understand why this is done
> this way).
>
> Regardless, it sounds like the "interactive" variable is something that OLC
> gives out as a way to make things work and unlike CDPATH, setting the
> interactive variable is unlikely to have any negative utility for users. So,
> it's probably best to leave it.
Even if the current setting has negative utility in some cases, we need to
keep in mind that changes to existing defaults also have a negative
utility for users. I know that I personally like having CDPATH set, and
even set CDPATH myself on non-Athena machines. I think it's disingenuous
to say "oh, I don't use this feature, we shouldn't have it on by default"
when other users are used to having it set.
--Quentin
>
> -Tim Abbott
>
>
>
